One could simply jump to the end of this post to get the point: The lowest carbon natural gas is inarguably the nearest natural gas. If the UK continues to use natural gas, as it undoubtedly will for at least the next 15 years in generation and longer in heat, why choose to use high carbon natural gas?

The carbon intensity (CI) of UK electricity generation has been studied relentlessly, but little is known about the CI of natural gas. Much of this is due to both the physical nature of gas and how the provenance of UK natural gas is hard to define at any one point in time in a dynamic, constantly evolving marketplace. This from British Gas should be updated to 2016 figures of 79 BCM, mostly due to gas replacing coal, but the trends remain broadly true: